$ 1 : 16
For every $1 of value invested, One Young World Ambassadors deliver $16 of social value, based on a Social Return on Investment analysis of 45 Ambassador-led initiatives addressing the 17 Sustainable Development Goals in 2023
SDG Impact Tracker
Interested in supporting impactful initiatives led by young leaders? Search this database of over 430 projects from the One Young World Community to find out more.
Glitterpill
Bjørn’s primary professional focus has always been on countering violent extremism. He founded the Khalifa Ihler Institute, an international think tank, lab, and consultancy organisation developing and promoting effective strategies for peacebuilding within communities. His work led to him becoming the inaugural Chair of the Advisory Committee of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, an initiative to facilitate information and technology transfer to reinforce automated content moderation.
In the aftermath of the January 6th attack on the US Capitol, Bjørn and his team were asked by the Congressional Select Committee to research the Proud Boys movement within the US. This, combined with real inroads both in policy and the private sector in the US, led Bjørn to found Glitterpill, a company focused exclusively on counter-terrorism, working in tandem with the not-for-profit Khalifa Ihler Institute. The company uses open-source intelligence to determine threat-levels, advising private sector companies on the misuse of their tools and services by extremist or proscribed organisations and on operational threats directed against their infrastructures and assets.
The mission of Glitterpill is to make the world safer for all, with a respect for human rights, human dignity, and communities at the core of the company’s ethos. Glitterpill focuses on networks, instead of on individual actions or pieces of content, to better understand the context and patterns of influence. This allows Glitterpill to tailor strategies, supporting clients in keeping their assets, infrastructure and interests safe from violent extremism and terrorism, and work with clients and partners in the tech and security sector to take strategic, targeted action, leading to the organised dissolution of online extremist networks, and reduction in threat levels. Glitterpill is working across sectors, both with the tech industry, companies in the infrastructure, energy and logistics sectors, the event and hospitality industry, and municipalities and civil society organisations focused on understanding the extremist landscape within specific regions or cities.
shipzero
Mirko is Co-Founder and CEO of shipzero, a social enterprise decarbonising the transportation and logistics industry on a global scale. The organisation is tackling the problem of supply chain emissions, traditionally the most difficult aspect of global emissions to account for due to the complexity of global logistics systems and a lack of accurate data collection. shipzero is enabling better monitoring of carbon emissions by integrating a wide range of data sources and formats, offering tailored, high-quality analysis and calculations thanks to the company’s multimodal data collection approach.
shipzero also includes primary data from its clients’ and their logistics partners in its calculation, ensuring that its reporting focuses on real emissions data and not only on estimated projections, as has been standard in logistics previously. The company’s comprehensive reporting allows for continuous supply chain emissions monitoring.
The data shipzero provides its clients offers the most accurate look at their carbon footprint, allowing companies to then implement informed strategies for carbon reduction and ensure compliance with national and supranational regulations and requirements. On top of emission tracking and optimization, the solution offers an end-to-end automation including data quality checks regarding completeness and consistency to ensure auditability. shipzero has tracked over 100 million shipments so far, helping clients in over 60 countries reduce their carbon emissions by as much as 5-10% per year.
Nivishe Foundation
Amisa is the Founder and Executive Director of the Nivishe Foundation, a non-profit organisation working to provide grassroots community-based mental health interventions, innovations and approaches. Amisa ensures that Nivishe’s approach is culturally sensitive to mental health in the African context, decolonising practices and designing interventions for local relevance to ensure that implementation is collaborative rather than imposed. The Nivishe Foundation works with community radio stations, using local languages to reach its target audience on topics surrounding mental health and its impact on communities. It also offers pro bono therapy services primarily to women, girls, and young people in informal settlements in Kenya. Additionally, the initiative works with marginalised communities in the country, including the Nubian community of which Amisa is a member.
Amisa attended the One Young World Summit in Manchester, 2022, which gave her a global perspective that has continued to impact her work. Amisa learned about more health interventions and practices through networking with fellow Delegates and attending mental health panels at the Summit.
The Nivishe Foundation reaches 5,000 women and 10,000 young people through its community-based mental health interventions. The organisation reports a 40% increase in people better positioned to seek mental health support as a result of its radio programmes and community outreach. Additionally, it has trained 320 mental health fellows on counselling, mental health, neuroscience and psychology. Fellows are tasked with designing a specific community-based mental health intervention as part of the fellowship programme in their own communities, and must reach at least 200 community members. Through this programme, the Nivishe Foundation has impacted an additional 64,000 people indirectly.
“Attending the Summit gave me exposure. My work is local, so by attending several mental health sessions and interacting with other Delegates working on the field about the interventions they were using, I was able to learn from them and gain a global understanding.”
Econox Laos and Econews Laos
Econox Laos is a social enterprise and environmental consulting firm providing services across a wide range of sustainability-related areas, including designing corporate social responsibility programmes, environmental impact assessment, training and capacity-building programmes. The organisation was founded by Valy, Phai Akone Sakountava, and Maliya Phommasone, It has worked with local communities to protect their natural resources, and it is also promoting and training communities in green tourism. Econox Laos also runs Plastic Free Laos, through which they work with businesses in the hospitality sector, offering consulting, auditing, and training services. The company also works with the country’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry to establish certificates and labelling norms for environmental standards.
Valy attended the One Young World Summit in Manchester, 2022, and was then successfully nominated by One Young World for the Fondation Prince Albert II de Monaco’s Re.Generation leadership programme. She and her team have implemented a ‘Rent your Cup' programme, through which people can rent refillable cups that can be later be returned at several locations across Laos. Econox Laos also has several established programmes for young people, including a project called ‘Youth for Wildlife’, through which young people are trained in conservation and tackling the illegal wildlife trade before creating communication tools to raise awareness within their own communities.
Econox Laos also has an established news and media platform called Econews Laos. It is the first and only news agency focused on environmental conservation, publishing news on sustainability issues and solutions both in Laos and from across the world. The platform is published in Lao to ensure that Laotians have access to environmental news that is otherwise usually only published in English.
“I was nominated by One Young World to join quite an amazing leadership programme called The Re.Generation Future Leaders Program funded by Prince Albert II of Monaco and I got the opportunity to be there for two weeks. And I think I'm quite impressed with how One Young World loves to make sure that us Ambassadors are being promoted or supported in any way possible that would be beneficial for what we are doing.”
The Iodine Deficiency Project
The Iodine Deficiency Project - Papua New Guinea
Peter Mabin
Ambassador-led Initiative
14
SROI
Peter is a medical student and the Founder & Coordinator of the Iodine Deficiency Project, an initiative addressing iodine deficiencies in rural and remote areas of Papua New Guinea. The Iodine Deficiency Project began working in Peter’s home province of Simbu, where school children present with high levels of iodine deficiency [1]. The project identifies communities in need and provides dietary and nutrition awareness through educational outreach to help rural Papua New Guineans avoid the harmful long-term consequences of iodine deficiency and lead a healthy diet. It also distributes supplements to tackle iodine deficiency in children and women of childbearing age. The Iodine Deficiency Project has since grown to include preventive work on other non-communicable diseases and vitamin deficiencies in Papua New Guinea.
Peter attended the One Young World Summit in Manchester, 2022. Attending the Summit changed his perspective on social impact, and he left feeling inspired to change his approach to addressing issues in Papua New Guinea by including different perspectives in his work.
The Iodine Deficiency Project has reached 300,000 people through medical awareness on iodine deficiency. This medical awareness has not only emphasised the importance of including iodine in local diets, it also addresses preventive and treatment measures for other health issues such as maternal and child healthcare, breastfeeding nutrition, malnutrition, sanitation and hygiene practices, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and cancer. Additionally, the project has distributed iodine capsules to 6,000 women and children, while providing local communities with additional healthcare and health centre access through its team of medical students.
“Being an Ambassador changed my view of solving issues not from just the community level but from the global perspectives. It also boosts and motivates me to do more for my community and my country.”
Hydroquo+
Zahin attended the One Young World Summit in The Hague, 2018, through The Resolution Project, and received his first impact funding as a result for his idea of leveraging AI and data analytics to tackle water-related challenges at scale. His organisation, Hydroquo+, deploys sensors at critical junctures of water infrastructure to forecast outbreaks of waterborne disease. These sensors use ultraviolet wavelengths through a UV spectrophotometer to measure flowing water’s spectrum in real time, with each spectrum corresponding to a World Health Organisation parameter that can indicate turbidity, dissolved solids, or free chlorine. Beyond a certain value, these parameters can be detrimental to human health so water networks are tested intermittently to ensure the safety of the water supply. Hydroquo+ can produce analyses of water quality parameters that would traditionally take laboratories days or even weeks in minutes through its diagnostic and monitoring systems.
Hydroquo+’s prescriptive copilot is trained against a corpus of over one million data points in relation to microbiology and water chemistry, and can provide real time guidance to ensure that corrective actions are taken in the event of anomalous indicators.
Zahin’s solution has been implemented in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where Dhaka WASA and C’WASA, which serves Chittagong, cater to over 30 million residents on a daily basis. Hydroquo+ technology is being used to diagnose, pre and post treat water, with stations currently deployed across the city’s supply network. The enterprise has also pioneered the use of drones and rovers to prevent critical failures in public water infrastructure. In the past two years, Hydroquo+ sensors have generated over 500 million data points, flagging over 10,000 potential contamination breaches and mitigating 170,000 tonnes of CO2 by reducing the need for over-chlorination by 25% and, as a result, limiting the amount of trihalomethane produced.
“One Young World holds a very special place in my heart. I got my first, I would say impact funding, back in 2018 at The Hague One Young World Summit. At that point, I thought, okay, what is the biggest challenge in the world, and can we leverage AI and analytics to solve that.”
Codi
Codi is an innovative organisation combining coding and digital skills with leadership training to facilitate economic inclusion and employability in Lebanon. Codi focuses on sustainable employment, providing participants with skills that are resilient to innovation and open new career opportunities.
The organisation focuses on reaching underprivileged communities through training the most vulnerable affected by Lebanon’s multilayered crisis. Its flagship programme is a full stack web development boot camp running for six months, with cohorts of around 30 students. Since its inception, 347 people have been trained through Codi’s core programming, with over 85% of participants entering the workforce upon completing the training.
In 2023, Codi announced a shift in its economic model to drive sustainability and scale. Hortense has received considerable support from her Lead2030 challenge sponsor, Deloitte, in pursuing this transition from completely free education to an accessible model where participants only pay for the training they have received once they are gainfully employed. This model ensures that the programme remains truly diverse, with Codi even covering transportation costs for participants, while allowing the organisation to remodel itself as a sustainable social enterprise.
Hortense’s mentorship with Deloitte happened in two phases; the first revolved around automating monitoring and evaluation processes. The second phase focused on Codi’s transformation strategy thoroughly and systematically.
Codi has used the Lead2030 prize money to invest in monitoring and evaluation capabilities and to support its central infrastructure. It has also upskilled its team with pedagogical training and further enhanced the organisation’s active learning methodology. The Lead2030 programme with Deloitte has helped smoothen Codi’s transformation into a viable business while retaining its transformative educational methodology.
“Winning the Lead2030 Challenge for Quality Education has significantly elevated Codi. Receiving mentorship from Deloitte coupled with strategic unrestricted funding has been pivotal for the organisation; supporting our transition do drive sustainability and scale”.
116 participants trained through Core programme in 2023, and 200+ trained through community workshops
Ocean Bottle
Ocean Bottle was founded by Will Pearson and Nick Doman in 2018 to empower individual consumers in the fight against plastic ocean waste. The company funds plastic collection in coastal communities, with 11.4 kilograms of plastic collected for each Ocean Bottle sold. The plastic collectors are able to exchange the waste they collect for money and get access to other social resources. Ocean Bottle has funded the collection of 11,400 tonnes of plastic so far, the equivalent of over one billion plastic bottles in weight. The company’s own bottles are made of recyclable stainless steel and recycled ocean-bound plastic. Each bottle has an embedded NFC enabled smart-chip, allowing bottle owners to further fund plastic collection by tracking refills on the Ocean Bottle app.
Through the mentorship opportunities offered by the Lead2030 programme, Will and his team have been introduced to employees from the challenge sponsor who work on banking solutions. The challenge sponsor also supported Ocean Bottle in producing a full analysis of its marketing collateral for business-to-business customers, and provided feedback to ensure the material is optimised for Ocean Bottle’s strategic priorities.
Ocean Bottle is using the funding from Lead2030 to scope out a public facing audit for its collection data, the first time such an audit will be conducted in the ocean waste collection industry. This will help establish industry compliance standards, but also assist Ocean Bottle in becoming as transparent as possible, communicate its success, and continue to lead the plastic collection space. Ocean Bottle’s Lead2030 challenge sponsor has provided support in communicating, framing, and publishing the audit's process and results of the audit to Ocean Bottle’s community.
“I think it's been just a big confidence boost for us to have support for doing things and taking decisions that we're not really comfortable or didn't have full confidence in taking. So they've been really reassuring, and I think a big part that explains that is that they've been really supportive and reactive on communication. So I think it's been really positive to work with them.” - Emilien Henrotte, Impact Manager at Ocean Bottle
3,400 tonnes of plastic collected in 2023
ClimateScience
ClimateScience is a science communication organisation making the realities of climate change easily intelligible to all. ClimateScience began during the devastating 2019 Amazon Rainforest wildfires. Michael noticed that while climate change increasingly dominated the news cycle, most people lacked access to free easily digestible science-based information. ClimateScience’s website had 500,000 visitors in 2023, with another 300,000 views on its YouTube educational videos. The organisation offers educational material in 18 languages.
ClimateScience has worked closely with its Lead2030 challenge sponsor, Deloitte, to better retain its users and better guarantee their educational outcomes, as well as expand its user base. After consultation with his mentors at Deloitte, Michael hired a new coder to improve user experience and ClimateScience’s product iteration pipeline. The organisation’s website conversion rate now stands at 12.5%, which is high for a platform that is entirely free to use, and Michael hopes to bring it to 20% next year.
The organisation has also introduced the format of its already successful Olympiad competition for young people with promising climate solutions to corporate professionals. This personalised and gamified solution serves all stakeholders’ interests and is tailored to the practicalities of corporate professionals’ lives. This engaging format allows professionals to learn and help solve global challenges alongside their day jobs. Working with his mentors from Deloitte highlighted the importance of the private sector for Michael. The lessons he has learned through working with his mentors has helped him conduct conversations with potential partners. The importance of quantifiable indicators of ClimateScience’s impact has been an additional highlight to come from Michael’s engagement with Deloitte through the Lead2030 programme.
“I think the biggest upside of the Lead2030 programme came from two different places...it came, firstly, from the One Young World Summit experience. It was the place where kind of everything came together for me. Secondly, it helped me get a bigger perspective in general on how the private sector and corporates work and think. The Lead2030 name actually has a lot more gravity than what I expected, like people recognise the title, the association and so they get quite impressed.”
60,000 users interacting and engaging with educational climate content in 2023
Litehaus International
LiteHaus International was founded by Jack Growden in 2017 to tackle digital inequality, particularly device poverty. It does this by installing ground-breaking digital classrooms with professionally refurbished digital devices equipped with Niunet’s free and wireless e-learning platform containing 6.3 million educational materials. Through its Digital Inclusion Program, it has also provided 5,600 underprivileged high school students in Australia with personal digital devices. The organisation has expanded rapidly, now working with 293 schools worldwide – of which 220 are in Papua New Guinea – impacting 202,000 people.
As part of the Lead2030 programme, Jack received mentorship from Deloitte Australia and the opportunity to attend the One Young World Summit 2022 in Manchester. This mentorship emphasised the importance of having a broad outlook and understanding of organisational strategy and direction to Jack, while the Summit provided him the opportunity to connect with other young leaders tackling digital inequality.
LiteHaus used the Lead2030 grant money to build 10 computer labs in Papua New Guinea’s Jiwaka province, helping the organisation scale its work in the country. The organisation’s partnership with Deloitte, its challenge sponsor, has only grown since the conclusion of the Lead2030 programme. This partnership has culminated in 43 computer labs now built, reaching 35,000 people. LiteHaus has also been onboarded as one of Deloitte Australia’s WorldClass digital literacy charities, receiving $50,000 annually in addition to priority access to pro-bono services and additional mentoring opportunities. Deloitte has donated 600 digital units to LiteHaus International so far.
“The Lead2030 programme has just been the beginning of a wonderful partnership with Deloitte. And just by virtue of having more resources, I've been able to do more. Without the Lead2030 programme, we wouldn't have gotten this Deloitte partnership.”
15,000 students and teachers gained digital access from the Lead2030 programme
El Derecho a No Obedecer / Corporación Otraparte Clean Air Advocacy School
El Derecho a No Obedecer / Corporación Otraparte Clean Air Advocacy School - Colombia
Alejandro Daly
OYW Funded Projects
El Derecho a No Obedecer is an advocacy platform that aims to empower young people in Latin America to pursue advocacy in public decisions. It works across issues such as air pollution, climate change, refugee rights, and peaceful mobilisation. The organisation has educational initiatives on approaches to air pollution monitoring and the effects of air contamination on health outcomes. The organisation is also involved in the legal consultation presented by Colombia and Chile to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. They are also connecting their work on air quality with health issues and the health system by working with medical centres and medical professionals to establish mutual understanding of the issue.
As a result of the Lead2030 programme and the support of AstraZeneca, The Right to Not Obey has been able to develop the second version of the "Nuevos Aires" Activist School for Climate Justice and Air Quality. This relationship with AstraZeneca has facilitated greater understanding of the connection between air pollution and health problems, and has closed the gap between students, activists, and health professionals.
Lead2030 funding will allow El Derecho a No Obedecer to buy air quality monitoring kits, which will be given to students educated in climate change, air pollution, and monitoring systems. The platform is also developing an app using Lead2030 funding through which people can monitor air quality and make informed decisions about their mode of transport. The organisation will also invest in internet infrastructure in the schools with which they work to ensure the results from the monitoring can be maximised. El Derecho a No Obedecer will also host a series of workshops across Colombia.
280 air quality monitoring kits distributed to students
120 health professionals engaged in conversations about air quality and public health
4 cities in Colombia impacted and one air quality and mobility app in development
Maseroto Beatrice Shai, Deloitte
Maseroto Beatrice Shai, Deloitte - South Africa
Maseroto Beatrice Shai
Leadership Biographies
Maseroto was active in sustainability issues during her university years. She came into the social impact and sustainability space professionally after being headhunted for a role addressing inequalities in South Africa. After joining Deloitte as a Consultant, Maseroto attended the One Young World Summits in Munich 2021 and Manchester 2022. She has since become WorldImpact Manager at Deloitte Africa. Maseroto credits her experiences at these Summits with further boosting her knowledge on current socio economic issues and enhancing her leadership capabilities, aiding her professional development at Deloitte.
Currently, in her WorldImpact managerial role, Maseroto is Lead of Deloitte Africa’s Impact Every Day portfolio, part of Deloitte’s WorldClass initiative, and is responsible for the implementation of employee volunteerism. WorldClass is the company’s strategic goal to impact 100 million people by 2030. Deloitte Africa aims to impact 14 million people through quality education, entrepreneurship to ensure decent work, reduced inequalities, and agriculture. Maseroto and her team implement the WorldClass strategy through partnerships and volunteer programmes with Deloitte employees utilising their skills to impact communities. She is responsible for engaging stakeholders internally at the company to ensure that volunteerism is happening, through which Deloitte employees can offer their time and skills in support of their company’s WorldClass goals. Through WorldClass initiatives at Deloitte Africa, Maseroto and her team’s efforts have reached 1,500,000 people so far.
In her daily role, Maseroto is also responsible for engaging with Deloitte’s key partners and stakeholders from both private and public sectors to align their work with WorldClass. She is also responsible for ensuring Deloitte’s compliance with the South African government’s Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment legislation, a comprehensive initiative to enhance the economic participation of Black people in the South African economy. Maseroto ensures that 1% of Deloitte South Africa’s net profit is dedicated to social impact work.
Maseroto is committed to delving deeper into social impact in Africa, especially in education. She is passionate about growing social impact, both within the corporate sector and outside of it, ensuring that companies become the solutions to the issues facing society. At Deloitte, within the WorldClass targets, Maseroto hopes to expand the company’s focus to other educational interventions beyond its current work with traditional education institutions.
“I got an opportunity to physically go to the Manchester Summit, which is mind blowing. Seeing people coming together and finding solutions collectively for each other, I was actually inspired to see that we are a generation that is looking towards solutions and wanting to better the future for the next generations to come. So that was definitely a key highlight for me when it came to One Young World.”
Alex Kennedy, Standard Chartered
Alex Kennedy, Standard Chartered - United Kingdom
Alex Kennedy
Leadership Biographies
Alex is a huge supporter of One Young World, having first attended the Summit in Bangkok, 2015 after one of his mentors suggested a career move from traditional banking into sustainability. Alex also saw value in attending the Summit to support the social enterprise – the Feel Good Bakery – which he helped found between London and Nairobi. He learned important lessons on sustainability and climate change at the Summit, which have informed his perspective as a social entrepreneur and in his professional role at Standard Chartered ever since.
“One Young World came at an amazing time in my life because I was at this crossover point between what I was doing in my career and what I wanted to do in my career. And I think it was a good push. The opportunity to be surrounded by like-minded individuals with really cool ideas, from all around the planet, was amazing. It was a huge catalyst in shaping my career and was a really amazing way to build a network.”
It was during an internship at Standard Chartered in 2008, whilst working on Seeing is Believing (the Bank’s flagship preventable blindness charitable programme) that Alex became interested in a career at the company. He joined Standard Chartered’s graduate programme, where he trained in banking, before using that experience to eventually transition into a sustainability-focused role. In 2018, alongside five colleagues, Alex co-created the sustainable finance team at Standard Chartered.
Currently Head of Sustainable Finance Solutions, Alex has helped develop over 40 sustainable finance products. His team were the first to create a sustainable deposit product for corporates. They also author Standard Chartered’s sustainable finance frameworks, including the Transition Finance Framework, which define what ‘green’, ‘social’ and ‘sustainable’ mean within the Bank, how transition finance is governed, as well as how the Bank mitigates greenwashing risk. Standard Chartered was the first major international bank to publish one of these.
Alex recently became Chair of the Bank’s Adaptation Innovation Hub, through which the Bank is exploring how it can mobilise capital to support emerging markets to become more resilient to the effects of climate change. As part of this, Alex is currently creating a market-first Guide for Adaptation and Resilience Finance in collaboration with KPMG and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR).
Alex is a trustee of the Vision Catalyst Fund, which aims to eradicate preventable blindness globally. To date, the organisation has donated millions of pairs of glasses to communities in low and middle-income countries and has recently started offering eye health accelerator grants. In the future it aims to mobilise billions of dollars of catalytic capital to fight preventable blindness.
Alex helped set up the Feel Good Bakery. This social enterprise takes young people from London, most of whom are former gang members, on volunteering trips to Kenya. Upon returning to London, these young people are then employed at the bakery. For every sandwich or coffee sold in the Bakery, a young person is fed at one of the projects in Kenya. The Feel Good Bakery now runs three coffee carts in London and is in the process of opening a coffee shop. In Kenya, Alex has helped finance the growth of an orphanage in Nakuru and a slum school in Nairobi.
Amanda Bartley, KPMG
Amanda Bartley, KPMG - Canada
Amanda Bartley
Leadership Biographies
Amanda’s passion for social justice and human rights matured during her time at the University of Toronto where she received an Honours Bachelor of Science in Economics and Psychology. After graduating university, she started her career as a Human Behaviour Researcher at in sync, Publicis Health. At her time at Publicis Health, Amanda was exposed to several research projects illuminating inequity in healthcare. During two global studies that were particularly impactful to her, Amanda mapped the female contraceptive journey in Italy, Brazil and China and completed a market understanding on the impact of a tropical disease across the Philippines, Indonesia, and Mexico.
Upon leaving Publicis Health, Amanda continued her research career at Unilever Canada, where her passions led her to embed equity throughout her work and ultimately attend the One Young World Summit in The Hague, 2018. At Unilever, Amanda expanded her research populations to amplify the hair care experiences in women of colour. She also served as Co- Chair of N’Abling, a business resource group focused on disability awareness within the workplace. Amanda’s experience at the Summit and Unilever solidified her perseverance to bring human rights to the forefront of her work.
“One Young World is where you find your intellectual kin. Thousands of people from around the world gathering to address the most pressing human rights and social justice challenges of our time. It’s a catalyst for our futures, a place to meet new friends and co-conspirators in this fight for a better world. And, despite how gut-wrenching the realities of today may be, you leave with hope for a better tomorrow.”
Currently, as a Senior Manager in Advisory Services at KPMG Canada, Amanda continues to do just that. Amanda is the Co-Chair of the National Black Professionals Network (BPN), a group dedicated to creating a greater sense of belonging for Black employees across the firm. The BPN has 300 members and runs several initiatives centring mentorship and community building. She also supported the development of KPMG’s Anti-Racism Strategy and co-authored a talent playbook for organisations to combat anti-Black and other forms of racism across Canada. The playbook covers all aspects of an employee’s professional journey, providing tangible solutions to critical moments where they are subjected to racism.
Throughout her community, Amanda remains dedicated to equity. She currently serves as a Governor of the University of Toronto and is one of the youngest alumni to hold this position. At the Governing Council, Amanda oversees both academic and business affairs of the university and is a member of the University Affairs Board and the Academic Board. She is also part of the Constituency Council at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health, Canada’s biggest mental health hospital. In this role, Amanda focuses on advising the board and senior executives on anti-Black racism, key programs, and the strategic plan.
Previously, Amanda served as Vice-Chair at Family Service Toronto, a century old organisation dedicated to supporting Torontonians experiencing precarity. During her six-year tenure, she was instrumental in the development of their strategic plan refresh, and the recruiting of the Executive Director and many fellow board members.
Kohtaro Kosugiyama, The Adecco Group
Kohtaro Kosugiyama, The Adecco Group - Japan
Kohtaro Kosugiyama
Leadership Biographies
Kohtaro realised that more could be done by businesses to address societal issues during his university years. He first joined The Adecco Group in Japan during their CEO for a Month programme – a way for C-suite executives to learn from young leaders about their expectations and ideas – as a result of his interest in creating social impact. During that programme, Kohtaro designed a hypothetical competitor strategy for The Adecco Group in Japan that was well-received and later influenced the company’s existing policies.
Kohtaro attended the One Young World Summit in Manchester, 2022. He remembers his experience at the Summit as eye-opening, and emphasises the value of meeting like-minded people from other companies working to solve the same or similar issues as “intrapreneurs”.
“As former Canadian Prime Minister and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Lester B. Pearson said, there cannot be peace without people understanding each other, and this cannot be if they don’t know each other; meeting like-spirited leaders from such diverse backgrounds at the Summit made me feel certain that with our little steps put together, the world can be changed.”
Following the completion of the CEO for a Month programme, Kohtaro was invited by the CEO of The Adecco Group in Japan to join the company as Head of Sustainability. As part of this role, Kohtaro designs their sustainability agenda and its implementation. His strategy integrates all 17 Sustainable Development Goals – with a particular focus on Quality Education and Decent Work and Economic Growth – into The Adecco Group’s business model in Japan to stimulate growth and differentiate the company in the HR sector.
In the Quality Education space, Kohtaro leads on providing consulting services to clients to improve the workplace environment for people to thrive in; they also focus on job-person alignment and generating skills for lifelong employability. To promote decent work that goes beyond traditional finance and safety aspects, he ties his vision for the company with the Japanese principle of Ikigai, using an AI algorithm to develop a job-matching system that allows people to find worthwhile and purposeful employment, aiming to define “decent work” in the era of disruptive technologies influencing the whole notion of “work.”
Kohtaro also works as a senior consultant with different companies and governments on sustainability strategy and transformation beyond The Adecco Group. He was the founder of the Tomoni Group, a non-profit organisation inspired by his university experience, that used diverse approaches to achieve unity in diversity and create a more peaceful future. Kohtaro is also a published author, his book focuses on his life experiences and knowledge on business sustainability, combining this with a vision for sustainability after the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
In June 2024, Kohtaro will join the Innovation Foundation, the global corporate foundation of The Adecco Group, as a Social Innovation Fellow. He will be part of a venture team to create employability solutions for Mature Workers, aged 55 years and above, who are seeking to re-enter work. This venture will link his previous sustainability work within The Adecco Group to solutions to wider societal issues.
How to use to the SDG Tracker
Search for projects by the following case study categories:
- Ambassador-led Initiatives: qualitative and quantitative analysis of the social impact of projects which are led by young leaders in the Community.
- Business for Social Good: written case studies for initiatives ran by corporate partner organisations, led by young Ambassadors/employees.
- Leadership Biographies: short biographies of Ambassadors who are growing into influential leaders for social good in some of the world’s largest companies, organisations, and in government.
- One Young World Funded Projects: detailed case studies of grant recipients from One Young World's funding opportunities, including Lead2030, Rebuilding Communities, and the COVID Young Leaders Fund.